Analyses of God beliefs, atheism, religion, faith, miracles, evidence for religious claims, evil and God, arguments for and against God, atheism, agnosticism, the role of religion in society, and related issues.

Wednesday, September 9, 2009

There’s something puzzling about ontological/a priori style arguments for us now. How do they work? For centuries, the prospect of proving God’s existence through some conceptual, a priori means seemed like an obvious, fruitful route. Like a proof in logic or mathematics, the presumption was that merely through understanding the concepts involved and unpacking their implications it could be discovered that God couldn’t not exist. God’s existence, it was thought, is a necessity—a deep structural feature of God and reality. He could no more fail to exist than 2 + 2 could fail to equal 4.

More generally, how do a priori proofs work? If a necessary truth can be revealed merely by my thinking about it, what are the implications for the relationship of our intellects to the reality that our concepts will reveal? Here’s one of the oldest and most profound epistemological problems considered by philosophers. The mind and its concepts are altogether different sorts of entities than the external reality that they are purported to be about. So how is that that intellect can come to have knowledge—know the truth—about that which lies outside the mind? What is the relationship between these two realms that allows for them to be bridged by knowledge? How is it that the containers that our minds happen to employ happen to line up with external objects and give us real access to them? For centuries the answer, which starts with Plato, was that the only real world is the one of concepts, universals, necessities, and logical truths. The material world is a fleeting, illusory realm. That is to say that insofar as knowledge is possible at all, we have it because the material world conforms our concepts, categories, and philosophical proofs. Mind is the ultimate arbitrator of knowledge, so the world conforms to mind.

With this sort of strong intellectual slant, the notion of proving God’s existence through an a priori proof like the ontological argument was obvious and natural. Our powers of reason are able to penetrate through to the real world when we employ them the right way, so if there is a God, we can come to know him by analyzing the concepts of him.

Questions still plague the intellectual approach to knowledge: how is it that the mind came to have this capacity to escape its confines and access the real world? How can we know that it can know? Why does it have powers that reveal truth instead of deception and mistake?

The embarassing and circular answer most often given is God. He endowed us with a set of cognitive capacities that allign with and grasp the real world. We can know that our faculties are calibrated to reality because God designed them. Of course the circular argument is that the alleged knowledge of God’s existence is a product of these faculties through the ontological argument. So we know that God exists by employing our intellectual powers, and we know that our intellectual powers are trustworthy because God makes them so.

There are other problems with the approach besides the circle. To modern ears, this sort of highly metaphysical and armchair approach to knowledge sounds alien. What’s happened in the last 200 years or so with the expansion of naturalism is that we’ve realized that this classic picture of the relationship of the mind to world has got it all upside down. Nature doesn’t conform to mind, mind conforms to nature. Humans, including their cognitive powers, are the products of the natural world, natural processes, natural (practical) necessities. Our intellectual faculties evolved, like everything else in us, through a process of natural selection. Competition for scarce resources in challenging environments slowly chiseled away the less adaptive biological features from the more adaptive ones. The long, circuitous process leaves us with a mishmash of kludged together features that were good enough at surviving to keep us alive long enough to reproduce. The human brain is not endowed with its cognitive powers by any intentional, thoughtful planning. In our case, as genetic variations occurred, those individuals whose neural capacities made it possible for them to better solve the basic problems of survival: locomotion, problem solving, anticipating the future, planning, and reacting were favored. Given that our minds are the product of this sort of process, it would be remarkable and bizarre that something like an ontological argument succeeded. (Keep in mind that the philosophical consensus for decades has been that the ontological argument does not work.) In that case, our capacity to have knowledge of God would be a strange anomaly. We would be organisms composed of a varied set of just-good-enough capacities for the practical challenges of fighting, fleeing, feeding, and reproducing, and these capacities arose from thelong, convoluted, and blind process of evolution, yet somehow we have this magical, unerring ability to transcend ourselves and the conditions that produced us and go to heaven with our thoughts.

Perhaps we do have this anomalous intellectual capacity and the nature-makes-the-mind model is wrong. But if someone thinks that a priori proofs really do give us the long sought after certainty of God’s existence in the old school sense of certainty, then it is incumbent upon them to explain just how it is that animals that are produced by natural selection came to have the power to acquire this sort of knowledge. How is it that organisms that are built primarily for foraging nuts and berries came by their magical transcendent knowledge? For a reasonable person who understands the nature of scientific inquiry, there are no serious grounds to doubt that we evolved and that our cognitive faculties are the product of natural selection. So if we can also know God with these minds, how did we come to have that extraordinary ability? The answer is that we don’t have such an ability. A priori proofs don’t give us that sort of access to some deep structure of reality. They help us build more articulated models of reality that predict more and incorporate more of our observations—but the empirical world is always the yardstick that the model must conform to. Rather than giving us a medieval style proof that God is real, what the ontological argument does is open a window on the concepts and logical principles upon which it is built. It is more revealing about the creatures that thought it up than the magical being it is alleged to prove.

Is it a philosopher thing that philosophers never want to state the obvious? I actually think, it's a teacher's thing. Good teacher's always try to impart critical thinking. Well, alright you being a professional are probably obligated to do so. Me, being an amateur, will just say it straight out.

Can anyone demonstrate knowledge, a priori or otherwise, without a material brain?

No...good, then we don't have any liars hanging out here.

We learn how the universe works by using our material brains. We have have found after tens of thousands of years that our first impressions can be right or wrong and the only way to have confidence in them is by testing them against controlled observations.

The fact that we must use controlled observations to confirm our intuitions or else there is high probability of erroneous predictions proves that our brains can and do make mistakes.

That fact that our material brains can and do make mistakes when compared to accurate predictions proves that there is absolutely NO SUCH THING AS A PRIORI KNOWLEDGE!

2+2=4? Well, what if every single time I took two rocks and put them on the ground and then put two more rocks on the ground within a one meter radius of the first two, there were all of sudden FIVE rocks on the ground?

I'll tell you what it means. It means 2+2= flipping 5! You cannot deny the empirical data. It may be uncomfortable, you may hate the implication (I know I would), but yes then 2+2=5. And then you must readjust your other predictions based on this new data.

The fact that we all agree that 2+2=4 is not due to some a priori magical knowledge. It is, like any other theory with predictive power, based on observed facts.

The universe wasn't created for the human brain, the human brain evolved in it. If the universe had been designed for our brains, quantum mechanics and tensor calculus would be as obvious to us as finding food to survive.

Thanks for all of the input lately, Tully. I agree with you on several points here. Our brains evolved to fit into the universe, and they are kludged together contraptions that do several things pretty well, but none of them perfectly. They do make mistakes, obviously. It doesn't follow that there is no such thing as a priori knowledge as far as I can tell. Pi is still 3.14159265. . . And that's something that can be proven a priori as much as anything can be proven. What has happened with the naturalism revolution in philosophy is that we've scaled back what we mean by a priori knowledge. It's knowledge that we can demonstrate within the confines of a conceptual/theoretical system that we have a very high degree of confidence about. But the confidence that we have in a model of the world that we've constructed is derived ultimately from observation and empirical testing. So that makes it seem like, in a very round about way, that there's no such thing as a priori knowledge.

I'm actually not averse to just denying it altogether as you are doing, but it remains useful to have the category and just be clear about what we mean by it. I've made several earlier posts about this issue. Thanks again.

My lack of acceptance of a priori knowledge may well be (read as; is probably) based in my not having a well developed philosophical background. I would still contend that it doesn't exist (pi, by the way, is derived from a polygonic algorithm that was accepted because of empirically measured values, if I couldn't cut the predicted length of strength and get reasonably close to the circumference, pi would be something else or not exist at all if it wasn't consistently wrong) but as always, I could be wrong.

But the real reason for my tirade is having a lack of data to decide where reasonable accommodation of dissenting opinion (or unintentional ignorance) deserves respectful education and where willful ignorance and/or intentional deception should be called to the carpet.

I'm not sure where that line should be drawn. You draw it where I suspect a professional academic probably should. I draw it probably a bit to the right of where a practical consumer of knowledge probably should.

So, where are the damned educational psychologists with the data I need?

I think you're confusing instances of a priori knowledge in action with proving that they are true. Let me switch to the Pythagorean theorem to make the point. It's true that for every right triangle you examine, you'll find that a square plus b square will equal c squared. But that's not why we know that the Pyth. Theorem is true, those are just a few instances of it. With Euclidean geometry we can prove that for ALL right triangles including the ones we've never looked at that a square plus b squared MUST equal c squared. The hallmark of a priori knowledge in contrast to a posteriori knowledge is that it informs you of truths beyond the immediate ones of observation. Same for pi. You may see iterations of it or be able to get an approximation of it from real circles, but that's not the proof that for every circle it will have pi as a necessary part of its mathematical relationships. If we measured up a real world circle and came up with another number for pi, we could be certain that it was our real world circle (which are never very precise) that was screwed up, not pi.

I'm not sure what to say about disagreements, dissenting opinions, and respectful arguments. I can divide the comments on my posts into some categories, usually:a) commenter doesn't get it and it completely out in left field.b) commenter isn't really interested in discussing the issue reasonably, they'd rather bicker, show off, or be nasty.c) commenter is unhinged and dangerous, and finds the existence of non-believers deeply troubling.d) commenter takes the time to read and think about the post, and tries to make a constructive contribution. e) commenter's consciousness has been completely co-opted by religious theo-babble from an early age and seems to think that quoting the Bible and preaching at me will change my mind.

Once in a while I will try to discuss things with people in a). I try not to rise to the bait with people in b) although I respond to them more than is useful, probably. I try to ignore the c) people and hope that they don't find my home address. And I always try to interact with the d) people. I always hold out hope for the e) people, but they can be very hard to get through to. Many of them need a thorough deprogramming.

But you never know how much good a little seed of thoughtful reasoning might do with someone you talk to, even the people who you have the least optimism about.

Curse this blog for getting me interested in all sorts of problems I really don't have time for.

I've been tinkering with the idea that a principled account of a priori knowledge might be defended along the lines that what we count as a priori knowledge is an artifact of certain kinds of inferential procedure. The way one goes about concluding that the Pythagorean Theorem holds for every right triangle differs significantly from the way one goes about deciding whether or not all ducks have feathers. Nevertheless, it will be through experience that one ultimately discovers in which situations which type of procedure is appropriate. Perhaps this will do justice both to my Quinean and Kantian sympathies, but I have to confess to having thought much less hard about this than would be ideal.

Agnostics are puzzled: Where is God? Why this confusion? But also: Why belief in the occult? How do the possessed levitate? Why are there provable 'Miracles'? Abbott, writing 'Flatland' explained contiguous geometric worlds to solve the difficulties. Now 'Techie Worlds' examines impossible concepts like trinity, resurrection, judgment, souls and more, showing they are logical and reasonable in the context of contiguous geometrical worlds. That is the way of science: to examine phenomena in the light of theory. Neither approach can be proved or dis-proved, but the advantages of life and nature weigh towards the Christian view. 'Techie Worlds' (available from amazon.com) will bring Moslems and Jews to the teachings of Jesus.

My book is out:

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Atheism

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Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Rochester. Teaching at CSUS since 1996. My main area of research and publication now is atheism and philosophy of religion. I am also interested in philosophy of mind, epistemology, and rational decision theory/critical thinking.

Quotes:

"Science. It works, bitches."

"The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully." - Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

"Religion easily has the greatest bullshit story ever told. Think about it. Religion has actually convinced people that there's an invisible man living in the sky who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry for ever and ever until the end of time. But he loves you! He loves you and he needs money!"George Carlin 1937 - 2008

Many Paths, No God.

I don't go to church, I AM a church, for fuck's sake. I'm MINISTRY. --Al Jourgensen

Every sect, as far as reason will help them, make use of it gladly; and where it fails them, they cry out, “It is a matter of faith, and above reason.”- John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

If life evolved, then there isn't anything left for God to do.

The universe is not fine-tuned for humanity. Humanity is fine-tuned to the universe. Victor Stenger

Skeptical theists choose to ride the trolley car of skepticism concerning the goods that God would know so as to undercut the evidential argument from evil. But once on that trolley car it may not be easy to prevent that skepticism from also undercutting any reasons they may suppose they have for thinking that God will provide them and the worshipful faithful with life everlasting in his presence. William Rowe

Unless you're one of those Easter-bunny vitalists who believes that personality results from some unquantifiable divine spark, there's really no alternative to the mechanistic view of human nature. Peter Watts

The essence of humanity's spiritual dilemma is that we evolved genetically to accept one truth and discovered another. E.O. Wilson

Creating humans who could understand the contrast between good and evil without subjecting them to eons of horrible suffering would be an utterly inconsequential matter for an omnipotent being. MM

The second commandment is "Thou shall not construct any graven images." Is this really the pinnacle of what we can achieve morally? The second most important moral principle for all the generations of humanity? It would be so easy to improve upon the 10 Commandments. How about "Try not to deep fry all of your food"? Sam Harris

Religion comes from the period of human prehistory where nobody--not even the mighty Democritus who concluded that all matter was made from atoms--had the smallest idea what was going on. It comes from the bawling and fearful infancy of our species, and is a babyish attempt to meet our inescapable demand for knowledge (as well as comfort, reassurance, and other infantile needs). Today the least educated of my children knows much more about the natural order than any of the founders of religion, and one would think--though the connection is not a fully demonstrable one--that this is why they seem so uninterested in sending fellow humans to hell.Christopher Hitchens, God is Not Great

We believe with certainty that an ethical life can be lived without religion. And we know for a fact that the corollary holds true--that religion has caused innumerable people not just to conduct themselves no better than others, but to award themselves permission to behave in ways that would make a brothel-keeper or an ethnic cleanser raise an eyebrow. Christopher Hitchens, God Is Not Great

If atheism is a religion, then not playing chess is a hobby.

"Imagine a world in which generations of human beings come to believe that certain films were made by God or that specific software was coded by him. Imagine a future in which millions of our descendants murder each other over rival interpretations of Star Wars or Windows 98. Could anything--anything--be more ridiculous? And yet, this would be no more ridiculous than the world we are living in." Sam Harris, The End of Faith, 36.

"Only a tiny fraction of corpsesfossilize, and we are lucky to have as many intermediate fossils as we do. We could easily have had no fossils at all, and still the evidence for evolution from other sources, such as molecular genetics and geographical distribution, would be overwhelmingly strong. On the other hand, evolution makes the strong prediction that if a single fossil turned up in the wrong geological stratum, the theory would be blown out of the water." Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion, p. 127.

One cannot take, "believing in X gives me hope, makes me moral, or gives me comfort," to be a reason for believing X. It might make me moral if I believe that I will be shot the moment I do something immoral, but that doesn't make it possible for me to believe it, or to take its effects on me as reasons for thinking it is true. Matt McCormick

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Top Ten Myths about Belief in God

1. Myth: Without God, life has no meaning.

There are 1.2 billion Chinese who have no predominant religion, and 1 billion people in India who are predominantly Hindu. And 65% of Japan's 127 million people claim to be non-believers. It is laughable to suggest that none of these billions of people are leading meaningful lives.

2. Myth: Prayer works.

Numerous studies have now shown that remote, blind, inter-cessionary prayer has no effect whatsoever of the health or well-being of subject's health, psychological states, or longevity. Furthermore, we have no evidence to support the view that people who wish fervently in their heads for things that they want get those things at any higher rate than people who do not.

3. Myth: Atheists are less decent, less moral, and overall worse people than believers.

There are hundreds of millions of non-believers on the planet living normal, decent, moral lives. They love their children, care about others, obey laws, and try to keep from doing harm to others just like everyone else. In fact, in predominately non-believing countries such as in northern Europe, measures of societal health such as life expectancy at birth, adult literacy, per capita income, education, homicide, suicide, gender equality, and political coercion are better than they are in believing societies.

4. Myth: Belief in God is compatible with the descriptions, explanations and products of science.

In the past, every supernatural or paranormal explanation of phenomena that humans believed turned out to be mistaken; science has always found a physical explanation that revealed that the supernatural view was a myth. Modern organisms evolved from lower life forms, they weren't created 6,000 years ago in the finished state. Fever is not caused by demon possession. Bad weather is not the wrath of angry gods. Miracle claims have turned out to be mistakes, frauds, or deceptions. So we have every reason to conclude that science will continue to undermine the superstitious worldview of religion.

5. Myth: We have immortal souls that survive the death of the body.

We have mountains of evidence that makes it clear that our consciousness, our beliefs, our desires, our thoughts all depend upon the proper functioning of our brains our nervous systems to exist. So when the brain dies, all of these things that we identify with the soul also cease to exist. Despite the fact that billions of people have lived and died on this planet, we do not have a single credible case of someone's soul, or consciousness, or personality continuing to exist despite the demise of their bodies. Allegations of spirit chandlers, psychics, ghost stories, and communications with the dead have all turned out to be frauds, deceptions, mistakes, and lies.

6. Myth: If there is no God, everything is permitted. Only belief in God makes people moral.

Consider the billions of people in China, India, and Japan above. If this claim was true, none of them would be decent moral people. So Ghandi, the Buddha, and Confucius, to name only a few were not moral people on this view, not to mention these other famous atheists: Abraham Lincoln, Albert Einstein, Aldous Huxley, Charles Darwin, Benjamin Franklin, Carl Sagan, Bertrand Russell, Elizabeth Cady-Stanton, John Stuart Mill, Galileo, George Bernard Shaw, Gloria Steinam, James Madison, John Adams, and so on.

7. Myth: Believing in God is never a root cause of significant evil.

The counter examples of cases where it was someone's belief in God that was the direct justification for their perpetrated horrendous evils on humankind are too numerous to mention.

8. Myth: The existence of God would explain the origins of the universe and humanity.

All of the questions that allegedly plague non-God attempts to explain our origins--why are we here, where are we going, what is the point of it all, why is the universe here--still apply to the faux explanation of God. The suggestion that God created everything does not make it any clearer to us where it all came from, how he created it, why he created it, where it isall going. In fact, it raises even more difficult mysteries: how did God, operating outside the confines of space, time, and natural law "create" or "build" a universe that has physical laws? We have no precedent and maybe no hope of answering or understanding such a possibility. What does it mean to say that some disembodied, spiritual being who knows everything and has all power, "loves" us, or has thoughts, or goals, or plans? How could such a being have any sort of personal relationship with beings like us?

9. Myth: Even if it isn't true, there's no harm in my believing in God anyway.

People's religious views inform their voting, how they raise their children, what they think is moral and immoral, what laws and legislation they pass, who they are friends and enemies with, what companies they invest in, where they donate to charities, who they approve and disapprove of, who they are willing to kill or tolerate, what crimes they are willing to commit, and which wars they are willing to fight. How could any reasonable person think that religious beliefs are insignificant.

10: Myth: There is a God.

Common Criticisms of Atheism (and Why They’re Mistaken)

1. You can’t prove atheism.You can never prove a negative, so atheism requires as much faith as religion.

Atheists are frequently accosted with this accusation, suggesting that in order for non-belief to be reasonable, it must be founded on deductively certain grounds. Many atheists within the deductive atheology tradition have presented just those sorts of arguments, but those arguments are often ignored. But more importantly, the critic has invoked a standard of justification that almost none of our beliefs meet. If we demand that beliefs are not justified unless we have deductive proof, then all of us will have to throw out the vast majority of things we currently believe—oxygen exists, the Earth orbits the Sun, viruses cause disease, the 2008 summer Olympics were in China, and so on. The believer has invoked one set of abnormally stringent standards for the atheist while helping himself to countless beliefs of his own that cannot satisfy those standards. Deductive certainty is not required to draw a reasonable conclusion that a claim is true.

As for requiring faith, is the objection that no matter what, all positions require faith?Would that imply that one is free to just adopt any view they like?Religiousness and non-belief are on the same footing?(they aren’t).If so, then the believer can hardly criticize the non-believer for not believing. Is the objection that one should never believe anything on the basis of faith?Faith is a bad thing?That would be a surprising position for the believer to take, and, ironically, the atheist is in complete agreement.

2. The evidence shows that we should believe.

If in fact there is sufficient evidence to indicate that God exists, then a reasonable person should believe it. Surprisingly, very few people pursue this line as a criticism of atheism. But recently, modern versions of the design and cosmological arguments have been presented by believers that require serious consideration. Many atheists cite a range of reasons why they do not believe that these arguments are successful. If an atheist has reflected carefully on the best evidence presented for God’s existence and finds that evidence insufficient, then it’s implausible to fault them for irrationality, epistemic irresponsibility, or for being obviously mistaken.Given that atheists are so widely criticized, and that religious belief is so common and encouraged uncritically, the chances are good that any given atheist has reflected more carefully about the evidence.

3. You should have faith.

Appeals to faith also should not be construed as having prescriptive force the way appeals to evidence or arguments do. The general view is that when a person grasps that an argument is sound, that imposes an epistemic obligation of sorts on her to accept the conclusion. One person’s faith that God exists does not have this sort of inter-subjective implication. Failing to believe what is clearly supported by the evidence is ordinarily irrational. Failure to have faith that some claim is true is not similarly culpable. At the very least, having faith, where that means believing despite a lack of evidence or despite contrary evidence is highly suspect. Having faith is the questionable practice, not failing to have it.

4. Atheism is bleak, nihilistic, amoral, dehumanizing, or depressing.

These accusations have been dealt with countless times. But let’s suppose that they are correct. Would they be reasons to reject the truth of atheism? They might be unpleasant affects, but having negative emotions about a claim doesn’t provide us with any evidence that it is false. Imagine upon hearing news about the Americans dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki someone steadfastly refused to believe it because it was bleak, nihilistic, amoral, dehumanizing, or depressing. Suppose we refused to believe that there is an AIDS epidemic that is killing hundreds of thousands of people in Africa on the same grounds.

5.Atheism is bad for you.Some studies in recent years have suggested that people who regularly attend church, pray, and participate in religious activities are happier, live longer, have better health, and less depression.

First, these results and the methodologies that produced them have been thoroughly criticized by experts in the field.Second, it would be foolish to conclude that even if these claims about quality of life were true, that somehow shows that there is theism is correct and atheism is mistaken.What would follow, perhaps, is that participating in social events like those in religious practices are good for you, nothing more.There are a number of obvious natural explanations.Third, it is difficult to know the direction of the causal arrow in these cases.Does being religious result in these positive effects, or are people who are happier, healthier, and not depressed more inclined to participate in religions for some other reasons?Fourth, in a number of studies atheistic societies like those in northern Europe scored higher on a wide range of society health measures than religious societies.

Given that atheists make up a tiny proportion of the world’s population, and that religious governments and ideals have held sway globally for thousands of years, believers will certainly lose in a contest over “who has done more harm,” or “which ideology has caused more human suffering.”It has not been atheism because atheists have been widely persecuted, tortured, and killed for centuries nearly to the point of extinction.

Sam Harris has argued that the problem with these regimes has been that they became too much like religions.“Such regimes are dogmatic to the core and generally give rise to personality cults that are indistinguishable from cults of religious hero worship. Auschwitz, the gulag, and the killing fields were not examples of what happens when human beings reject religious dogma; they are examples of political, racial and nationalistic dogma run amok. There is no society in human history that ever suffered because its people became too reasonable.”

7.Atheists are harsh, intolerant, and hateful of religion.

Sam Harris has advocated something he calls “conversational intolerance.”For too long, a confusion about religious tolerance has led people to look the other way and say nothing while people with dangerous religious agendas have undermined science, the public good, and the progress of the human race.There is no doubt that people are entitled to read what they choose, write and speak freely, and pursue the religions of their choice.But that entitlement does not guarantee that the rest of us must remain silent or not verbally criticize or object to their ideas and their practices, especially when they affect all of us.Religious beliefs have a direct affect on who a person votes for, what wars they fight, who they elect to the school board, what laws they pass, who they drop bombs on, what research they fund (and don’t), which social programs they fund (and don’t), and a long list of other vital, public matters.Atheists are under no obligation to remain silent about those beliefs and practices that urgently need to be brought into the light and reasonably evaluated.

Real respect for humanity will not be found by indulging your neighbor’s foolishness, or overlooking dangerous mistakes.Real respect is found in disagreement.The most important thing we can do for each other is disagree vigorously and thoughtfully so that we can all get closer to the truth.

8.Science is as much a religious ideology as religion is.

At their cores, religions and science have a profound difference.The essence of religion is sustaining belief in the face of doubts, obeying authority, and conforming to a fixed set of doctrines.By contrast, the most important discovery that humans have ever made is the scientific method.The essence of that method is diametrically opposed to religious ideals:actively seek out disconfirming evidence.The cardinal virtues of the scientific approach are to doubt, analyze, critique, be skeptical, and always be prepared to draw a different conclusion if the evidence demands it.